Dupont Circle Neighborhood Overview

Dupont Circle is a traffic circle, park, neighbohood, and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The traffic circle is located at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW, Connecticut Avenue NW, New Hampshire Avenue NW, P Street NW, and 19th Street NW. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW to the west, M Street NW to the south, andFlorida Avenue NW to the north. The local government Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC 2B) and the Dupont Circle Historic District have slightly different boundaries.

Dupont Circle is served by the Washington Metro Red Line at the Dupont Circle Metro station. There are two entrances: north of the circle at Q Street NW and south of the circle at 19th Street NW.

Dupont Circle is located in the “Old City” of Washington, D.C. — the area planned by architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant — but remained largely undeveloped until after the American Civil War, when there was a large influx of new residents. The area that now constitutes Dupont Circle was once home to a brickyard and slaughterhouse. The area’s rowhouses, primarily built before 1900, feature variations on the Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque revival styles. Rarer are the palatial mansions and large freestanding houses that line the broad, tree-lined diagonal avenues that intersect the circle. Many of these larger dwellings were built in the styles popular between 1895 and 1910.

Today’s Dupont Circle includes the Strivers’ Section, a small residential area west of 16th Street roughly between Swann Street and Florida Avenue. The Strivers’ Section was an enclave of upper-middle-classAfrican Americans — often community leaders — in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The area includes a row of houses on 17th Street owned by Frederick Douglass and occupied by his son. It takes its name from a turn-of-the-century writer who described the district as “the Striver’s section, a community of Negro aristocracy”.

The neighborhood is centered around the traffic circle, which is divided between two counterclockwiseroads. The outer road serves all the intersecting streets, while access to the inner road is limited to through traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. Connecticut Avenue passes under the circle via a tunnel; vehicles on Connecticut Avenue can access the circle via service roads that branch from Connecticut near N Street and R Street.